I just recently managed to break off one of the spokes on my video card fan. Now it makes this kind of far-away-vacuum sound that is really annoying. If I were to break off the spoke opposite to this one, would the sound get better or worse? I’m planning on getting a new video card anyway, but I don’t really have the money now. Would that solution help? Any other solutions you guys can think of?
Google up “GPU cooler” there are bunches
Here is a fanless GPU Cooler
Here’s a fanless GPU cooler - Zalman’s ZM80-HP Heatpipe GPU Cooler
What kind of card is it? Do you play 3D games? If not, you might not be taxing the processor much at all and can just unplug the fan and have it work fine.
It might, or you might make it worse if you damage the bearing when you try to break off the other one (in my experience, things you want to break are a lot harder to damage than otherwise identical things you don’t want to break).
Small fan, a bit more than an inch across? Buy a new one. I needed a small fan for a FireWire drive enclosure and found one at a local computer store. It was packaged as a video card fan and cost about five bucks.
Great, thanks for the replies. As long as we’re talking about computers, are Power Supplies made to fit any case? My current PS is 86H x 150W x 140L in mm. The PS I’m looking at is 3.6H x 6W x 6.6L inches. Would the screw holes line up? Thanks again.
That power supply should swap in with no problems related to screws. ATX is a set of combined electrical and physical standards, so any PS that’s labeled ATX should work in any ATX case.
However, I must say that I’ve never heard of “Power Up!” and there are better places to buy from than Tiger. The customer reviews look pretty favorable though, and the fans have ball bearings, so they should stay quiet for a good while. (Sleeve bearings tend to grind and squeal within a year.)
Check out Quiet PC . They carry Zalman. I replaced my GPU fan and NorthBridge fan because both were going South noisily. Now I am happy 
Fry’s Electronics also carries some Zalman stuff. Quiet PC also carries quiet power supplies, which I have not yet bothered with.
Forgot to mention that I installed a Zalman Heatpipe on my GPU with no problems. I also added the fan, cuz I figured it was cheap. The instructions are easy to follow, but I recommend that you “measure twice, cut once.” You’ll need to take your video card out of the case.
Based on personal experience I really, really, really do not recommend getting a cheap power supply. They will die a sudden death leaving you in the lurch. Spend $70 on a good, name-brand power supply (I’ve always like Enermax). No joke, I have had three cheapos fry out on me and at least one on a friend. It’s just not worth it.
Another person here agreeing you shouldn’t get a no-name power-supply - Enermax(as mentioned above) is a good brand, as is Thermaltake, though I prefer Antec myself. And if you have cash to spare, there is PC Power & Cooling, top of the line but expensive.
Hehe… Not sure how I forgot to mention brands yesterday - musta been in a hurry. The brands listed above are all good, but PC Power & Cooling is my favorite.
FWIW, I’ve got a PC P&C Silencer PS in my box, along with a “smart drive” hard drive enclosure and a Zalman heat pipe on the video. The heat pipe really does the trick, and gets rid of a traditionally whiny little fan. They may not be really loud, but that steady eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee gets to you after a while. You have to get right up on top of the box to tell if it’s on, and there’s some fairly hot stuff inside - an overclocked 2.8 GHz Pentium and ATI 9600XT video. Case fans are also PC P&C’s Silencer design.
Silent, solid black anodized aluminum case with no gewgaws like lights or windows - it’s a stealth computer. 
Another vote for Antec here. In fact, my 400W PS is so quiet that it gets drowned by my GPU’s cooling fan.
OK, not only was that fan broken, but something on my motherboard is making an extremely loud noise. It’s not another broken fan because there aren’t any more fans to be broken. Is there a way that my motherboard itself could be making all this noise? The noise seems to be coming from behind a fan that covers a heatsink (I assume). It kind of looks like this. Thanks.
And um…another update. My computer just died. I was using it when it suddenly began displaying a weird pattern of colored pixels. I don’t know what those pixels meant except that my computer just got owned by something. I immedietly turned off the computer, checked under the hood, and didn’t see anything unusual. I turned it back on, and the crazy colors are still at it. Is this a case of a dead processor? Dead memory? I have no clue what to google for. I started with “computer display colors pixels crazy” but that didn’t help. Please assist!
Well, the picture you posted is a fan/heatsink for your processor. I have to believe that it’s the fan that went out. When I test fan noise, I start unplugging fans one by one, starting with the case fans.
Hard to tell what’s going on with your “dead” computer. When you turn it on, do the colored pixels start immediately, or do you get the regular video bios and bios messages first?
If you have a P4 or Athlon, and your CPU fan is dead, and it’s connected to a motherboard power socket, then you might not be able to boot if the fan is dead. Some new motherboards automatically sense your fan’s speed, and won’t let you boot if it’s dead. This is a safety feature which prevents you from melting your processor.
If you’ve got an Athlon processor, it’s probably well and truly cooked.
Athlons are known for suffering severe and rapid damage if their heatsinks aren’t up to snuff. IIRC, a computer magazine fairly recently ran a test and from cold boot, had an Athlon up in flames (literally smoking) in under 30 seconds with no heatsink.
The magazine was unable to damage their test Pentiums - they’re generally clever enough to recognize “I’m too hot!” and will either throttle back or simply halt before they fry.
Hopefully, it was only the processor that fried. It’s quite possible that the socket or motherboard were also damaged. Memory and other components are probably OK, at least.
I have P4. I unplugged the fan right above the heatsink, and even with the fan not plugged in, there’s that same lawn mower noise. The only things in the noisy area are the power supply, which I just upgraded to a brand new 400W; fan, which I unplugged and determined as not a problem; the heatsink, which I can’t believe could make any noise at all (don’t they just sit there), and the processor. Can processors make noise? BTW, I turned the computer directly off after it displayed the pixels and made 2 loud beeps. When I turned the computer back on after (not more than a minute after), it immedietly showed the pixels again, so I turned off the computer.
Another update: Later that night (last night), I was fiddling around in my computer and decided to test it out. It booted up with no pixel problems, still had noise, and made it to the Welcome screen. I turned it off from there because I didn’t want to press my luck. So this means that nothing is permanently damaged.
Here’s a link to my computer.
How do I take off the fan/heatsink? I don’t see any screws attaching it to the motherboard. I figured out how to get the fan off, but the heatsink just sits there. There are these two weird looking metal things sticking out between the heatsink and the fan. I thought that it was a clue to get the thing off, but pushing nor pulling it does any good. I didn’t push too hard for fear of breaking something. Is there anything I should be doing?
Again, thanks a lot for your help.
Oh, and for my computer, I replaced the stock video card with a 64MB GeForce4 Ti4200. I also put in a new sound card, but I don’t think either of those should matter.
2 beeps? I’ll go out on a limb and guess you have an AMI BIOS, which translates to:
Your computer has memory problems. First check video. If video is working, you’ll see an error message. If not, you have a parity error in your first 64K of memory. First check your SIMM’s. Reseat them and reboot. If this doesn’t do it, the memory chips may be bad. You can try switching the first and second banks memory chips. First banks are the memory banks that your CPU finds its first 64K of base memory in. You’ll need to consult your manual to see which bank is first. If all your memory tests good, you probably need to buy another motherboard.
More about beep codes here
As for the heatsinks, they’re generally held on by some rather stiff spring clips. If you look at the lower end of them, you should see slots in their ends and the corresponding prongs on the CPU socket that they’re hooked around. Hold the sink in place (so it doesn’t slide around on the CPU or fly off and dent something when it comes loose) and push in on one of the clips until it clears the prong. The other side should come off easily then. Once it’s off, you’ll understand the need for restraining the heatsink - that half-inch square silvery-bluish bit in the middle is the actual silicon wafer - scratch this and the processor is wrecked.